What Then?
by she-with-the-pen
Summary: And if you're beautiful what then? The Lark arrives in London,carrying the convict home, but this time something's different. Silver razors make their way into unsuspecting hands, and hope and sin walk side by side.


The blackest city in the world was brightened only by cold white mist as the _Lark_ found her place at the dock. Fifteen years Benjamin Barker had lived this moment in his head, but now he couldn't even see it. The pain of a gash running the length of his back was much more a part of his reality. As if the mines would follow him here. As if London weren't enough of a Hell on its own.

"Mr. Todd?" came a hesitant voice. Anthony had hardly dared to look at the man during the passage, but he found his voice as the familiar town came into view.

"I'd like to thank you Anthony. That was an uncommon thing you did for me." Curious, but the rescued man sounded sincere and present while he stared far into the depths of the city. When he faced the sailor, it seemed as if nothing lived behind the pale face and streaked hair.

"An uncommon thing. I might still be…"

Anthony ducked his head. "Any good Christian would have done so, sir."

"Ah, but they wouldn't." Todd had such black eyes. "They would've left me to rot there…. You're very young lad. But you'll learn soon enough in this cess pool."

Anthony swallowed, stared at the gas lamps guttering. "If there should be anything else I could help with…"

"You might find me round abouts Fleet Street." The anchor splashed into the brine.

* * *

The streets were absolutely dead, because there was no malice to keep them alive. Benjamin used to think of London as a vivid, living thing. It was Todd who had returned, and he knew now what he had mistaken for vitality was just the perverse energy it took to sap the life out of good people. Whatever those were.

Dawn light hitting London's chimneys. There it was, the painted façade that had been his shop and home.

Mrs. Lovett carried three heavy trays of stinking meat up from the basement, and tried to hold onto her candle at the same time. She had almost reached the top when her foot slipped off a crumbling stair. She managed to stop herself from tumbling down, but trays and candle clattered back to the bottom, spattering her dress in the process. She yelled, cursing the dark and the old, faulty steps.

"Whatch you gonna do now, Mrs. Lovett?" she asked herself, trying not to cry. She had been lucky to get that meat at all. She sighed and descended by the light of a single match.

There was something very wrong with the familiar building, but Todd stole in anyway. There were tables and chairs, a battered counter, and a large oven that crackled halfheartedly. So nothing remained of his home, but he was not surprised. Of course everything would be gone. The image of Lucy and Johanna still here and waiting blazed in his mind. He swept out the door again. The Judge remained.

The shop door was slightly ajar, thought Mrs. Lovett, but it must have been a draft, because no one would visit in these dawn hours, not even if her pies resembled something better than heaps of mold. She shoved the trays into the oven, and the reclaimed meat started to cook, crushed bone fragments and, now, whatever had been on the basement floor cooking along with it. But when and if she managed to sell this last, disgusting batch, she would be at her wits end for how to meet rent, survive. She shut the door and thought wryly of the phantoms that were rumored to haunt the building. But that was it!

* * *

"No silver, no sale," said the very large shopkeeper. His gaze was enough to persuade Anthony to leave. More false coins for wages. He could kill the captain for this! That was, if the man hadn't sailed away that very morning with a new crew.

"Alms! Alms—"

"Get away there, he don't want _your _business!" A woman in a stained dress shooed a beggar away from Anthony.

"Wha' abou' silver of a diffren' kind, deary?" she said. She opened a small box, revealing a set of razors.

"Er, ma'am—"

"Here take that," the woman placed a razor in his hand. "They're true silver, none better. Now, don't you try giving me them false coins, but I'd be _very _pleased to part with one of these for a few of those honest brass you have…"

"Ma'am, I don't really need…"

Lovett didn't hear him. She was too elated at this chance to finally earn a few coins to notice the boy wasn't interested.

A constable across the street had stopped to look at them. Anthony turned to see the woman flee.

"Wait, your…" Anthony pocketed the razor reluctantly and slipped into the crowd, avoiding the constable. Now someone would accuse him of stealing, no doubt.

He looked up and stopped suddenly. There, above the street was a girl, yellow hair loose and eyes staring beyond the rooftops. He thought, but couldn't quite believe that she smiled at him. He walked towards her smile but his view was obscured as he collided with someone.

"Mr. Todd?" He appeared not to hear him.

"Mr. Todd?"

"…Anthony?"

"I just saw you from across the street. What are you doing here, -"

"There's a great evil here." Todd said quietly. Anthony had already guessed that Todd was less than fond of London, but something in his pointed stare made him think the 'evil' was more specific to this street, this house.

"I wouldn't know."

"Say lad, is there a barber in these parts?" Todd asked.

"I…I thought I saw one around Candlewick…"

"Thank you." Todd turned and was lost in the crowd as quickly as the woman had been. But when Anthony looked up, the girl was still there. She smiled again, looked fearfully behind her, and disappeared for a moment. He held his breath. Then she was back, opening the window. She dropped something out of the window and he scrambled for it. It was a key.

It was awhile before Anthony could find the resolve to use the rusted iron key, and awhile longer before he could enter without the certainty of being thrown straight back out. The girl had disappeared from her window, but no one had gone in or out of the house. It must be empty, apart from her, of course. She wanted him to use it, didn't she?

When an organ grinder and his monkey attracted attention down the street, he slipped inside the great grey house. He shut the door quickly and turned around holding his breath. Nothing, except the bustle from kitchens down the next hall. Not empty after all. He crept up the stairs, heart pounding, saw a pale form at the top—but it was the girl.

* * *

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PU-LEEEEASE!"

A gasp. Mrs. Lovett clapped her hand to her mouth, tucked the box of razors into her coat, and then edged closer to the gaunt man. Just before she reached him, Fidelia Mooney sidled in front of her and grasped (could it really be Benjamin?) Benjamin's arm.

"Good day to you sir," (as always, the woman was trying to pass herself off as a lady, rather than a poor shopkeeper).

"are you new in town?" (No! He wasn't!) "I could give you room and board, it's always warm at my premises," (Her premises! Ha! He should be staying with people who knew him, not people like…her).

"I—" Benjamin wasn't having any of this, and Mrs. Lovett smiled to herself.

"You see, I'm also a cuisinier." (God!) "I'll be cooking for the Judge's wedding soon."

Suddenly Benjamin's eyes were locked on Mrs. Mooney, filled with an interest that made Mrs. Lovett feel ill. He motioned to the side of the square, away from the commotion on Senor Pirelli's stage. Lovett followed them.

"And who is to be the bride at this wedding?" asked Todd tensely.

"Why his ward, of course! She doesn't know it yet, but that match was always meant to be, lucky girl. Judge Turpin placed the order several days ago." Mrs. Lovett wasn't sure if she was more jealous of Benjamin's attention or the wedding order. But she was quicker than Mooney to spot Benjamin disappearing down an alley. She hadn't ever had a lot of opportunities.

"Wait!"

He continued for a moment, then turned. _So I am not letting this one go,_ she thought furiously.

"Benjamin, I remember! And I have something of yours!"

"You—?" Lovett didn't let him finish.

"Go! I can see you need to go. But I'm always at Fleet Street. I'll still be there…" He took his first steps before she stopped speaking, and Nellie Lovett hoped that what she had said would be enough, with these fifteen years passed. But there was a twinge of doubt that Benjamin Barker had returned at all, that she hadn't just spoken to a bemused stranger.

* * *

The stairs of the old house creaked almost inaudibly, but Johanna always heard them.

"Quick, hide!" she whispered. Anthony disappeared beneath the bed. _This is the end _she thought, because she had just seen someone who looked bright and hopeful as people said she looked, who knew the bitterness that she knew—

The Judge knocked sharply and opened the door.

"You look more beautiful every day, Johanna," came the dead voice.

"Thank you, my lord." She stared hard out the window, hoping that she imagined sounds coming from under the bed.

"I have always felt that in your coming there was a divine influence."

A sharp intake of breath.

"And I know now that there is divinity in my protecting you. I want to always protect you from the world, Johanna." Turpin waited for her to speak.

So quietly and harshly, "No."

"Johanna?"

"I—I won't marry you, or let you protect me!"

A muscle twitched in the Judge's jaw.

"I can see that this is a shock to you, that a soul so pure as yours might be fearful of the idea of marriage. But this is why we must be together, because you won't survive the greater, crueler shock of independence."

At first Johanna didn't see the figure emerge behind her, but when the Judge's eyes widened, she turned.

"Anthony-!"

Turpin gnashed his teeth, and when she didn't move, he grasped her neck and threw her to the floor.

The convict with the streaked hair ran up the steps of the Judge's house and beat at the door. His face was wild. When a servant opened it, he pushed the man aside and ran to the racket upstairs, knowing naturally that this was where he should be.

"Don't!" Johanna screamed at Turpin, willing to do anything, so long as he would stop looking at Anthony that way.

"Get off, you stupid girl! It's to Fogg's Asylum with you, and the hangman for this one!"

The door slammed open, bouncing back off the wall and the Judge froze, hand still raised to hit Johanna. And in that silent moment, the razor bit across the Judge's neck. A single drop of red sank into Benjamin Barker's sleeve, the rest raining down on the floorboards with Turpin's body.

Anthony Hope turned a bloodspattered face to the girl who he had seen strength in, despite the efforts of others to hold her back, the girl who seemed to care for a stranger, when others would turn upon their oldest friends if it meant power for themselves. And now he was forced to look at this girl through a red river of his own sin.

But it was the man driven mad by a decade of injustice who saw clearly then. The Judge was dead. And she was beautiful. At first exactly as he had pictured her, and then, as he gazed longer, a new image, the only one possible, with the old imaginings completely abolished.

Admitting, even to himself, that Anthony, and Johanna (Johanna!) were good people, and there and alive, not crushed under the weight of rotten society, was nearly impossible. But he couldn't believe any differently looking at them. They would be alright, even in this world. Then he remembered the woman in the alley, who said she had something of his. Would he go to her? He looked out at the city, then back to the sailor and his daughter with the yellow hair. Would he go to that woman? Was it possible that men still had choices of their own?

Mrs. Lovett waited in her pocket of London, clutching the box of silver razors. In between her and the Judge's house, a beggar woman sang out for mercy.


End file.
